Gangs Cultivate Turf In Prison

`You Have To Belong`

March 10, 1985|By William Recktenwald.

The last moments of Ronald Kleis` relatively short and unproductive life were violent and bloody. He was ambushed in a hallway by three shadowy figures who jabbed homemade knives repeatedly into his body until he fell dead on the floor.

Mark down the 21-year-old Chicagoan as another victim of gang violence.

The bitter irony for his family is that the stabbing did not happen on a city street. It occurred behind prison walls, where the Northwest Side man had been sent to keep him out of trouble.

``Ronnie used to tell me about gangs in the prison,`` said his mother, Donna. ``He said the whole place was run by gangs. You have to belong. If not, then you have to do things for them, you have to do whatever they say.``

Her son had been sent away for robbery. He had been in prison just more than a year when he was murdered on April 16, 1981.

Authorities generally acknowledge that street gangs have dominated Illinois` four major state prisons since 1969, right down to supplying clothing and other perquisites to gang members and telling their keepers outright who`s really running the show.

At a time when police are coming down hard on street gangs and prosecutors are obtaining record numbers of convictions and sending gang leaders off to prison, the paradox is that they continue to operate behind bars with the same latitude, if not more, than they enjoyed on the outside.

Urban gang members who engaged in such activities as murder, assault, drug trafficking, theft, robbery, mob violence, intimidation, rape, extortion, recruitment, protection rackets, illegal possession of weapons and intramural warfare may have been taken off the streets but not off their beats.

Prison experts maintain, and court documents show, that gang members have merely transferred their operations to a new turf.

``Gang activity at the four maximum-security institutions is a very serious problem, and we see it filtering down to others now,`` said Jeanette Musengo, director of the Illinois Prisons and Jails project for the John Howard Association, a Chicago-based prison watchdog group.

``At least 75 percent of the inmates in those maximum-security places are gang members, and it could be higher,`` added Musengo, a frequent visitor to prisons throughout Illinois in the last 14 years.

The problem is, as a Downstate federal judge put it, ``You`re dealing with criminals of the 1980s in prisons built in the 1890s.``

Stateville opened in 1919, but the Menard, Pontiac and old Joliet penitentiaries were built in the 1800s when the inmate population as a whole was considerably more docile than today.

The structure of the older prisons is such that when a lever is pulled to unlock a cell door, it automatically opens 50 doors, leaving a lone guard to face as many as 100 prisoners emerging from their cells.

As a result, both penal observers and federal court findings agree, prison gangs are running the institutions.

``The (prison) staff feels very threatened,`` Musengo said. She said correctional officers have complained to her, ``How do you suppose it makes me feel when I tell a guy to lock up (go to his cell) and he walks past me and says, `Shove it, punk, I run this place.` What can I do?``

Musengo added: ``I`ve had people tell me they go to the counselor and say that they want to be in a certain kind of a job and the counselor will say,

`Well, if you`re not a (gang name) forget it, because that is (gang name)

territory. If you go over there you`re going to be back the next day licking your wounds.`

``For a long time there was an economy of scarcity. If you don`t have enough clothes, you can talk to your counselor, your tier sergeant or the

(cell) block lieutenant. They can`t get you anything. But you tell your gang brother who works in the clothing room that you need some new pants and you get them tomorrow . . . and they fit.``

Two recent federal court decisions document the extent of gang problems in prisons:

-- ``The gangs engage in extortion, possession and control of contraband, including weapons, and other criminal activities within the inmate community,`` wrote U.S. District Judge Harold Baker of the Central District of Illinois in findings related to the Pontiac Correctional Center.

-- ``. . . Street gangs, or organized criminal activity, is rampant at Joliet,`` wrote U.S. District Judge George Leighton in Chicago.

The case before Baker involved charges by several Pontiac inmates that the Department of Corrections failed to protect them adequately from gang members. Baker, after 2 1/2 days of sworn testimony from prison officials, inmates and prison experts, made several findings:

-- Up to 75 percent of the inmates in Pontiac belong to urban street gangs organized for criminal purposes. They have a hierarchy and maintain discipline among members.